Nokia wants to patent haptic feedback tattoos

According to a recent patent application, Nokia wants to create tattoos that give you a tingly feeling when you receive a call or text on your smartphone. Simply getting haptic feedback on your phone isn't enough, apparently. Nokia now wants your skin to vibrate via a temporary or permanent tattoo using magnetic ink.

The concept involves having demagnetized ink directly imprinted on your skin and then re-magnetized. Notifications on your smartphone can then trigger vibrations in the magnetic ink. Different notifications, for instance text messages versus phone calls or voicemail alerts, could trigger different vibration patterns. However, this will require your device to be able to emit varying magnetic fields.

Although the usefulness of this idea appears to be less than the potential "cool" factor, it could possibly be helpful for users that need to avoid audio alerts but can't feel the vibration alerts when their phone is stored in a purse or backpack. There are surely other use cases and it will be interesting to see if this idea ever materializes.